decreed their return to the house. But the ecstasy of
finding each other, again was too new. They passed the dark old gateway
to the sunken garden, and walked on, talking thirstily, drinking deep
of the joy of words.

Hand in hand they went up the hill, and time and space might have
equally been demolished. That hill had seemed a long climb to Martie
years ago: to-night it seemed a dream hill, she and John were so soon
at its little summit.

Below them lay the dark village and the furry tops of trees flooded
with gray moonlight. The odours of a summer night crept out to meet
them, odours of flowers and dew-wet, sunburned grass. The roadside
fences were wreathed with wild blackberry vines that took weird shapes
in the dark. In the idle fields spreading oaks threw shadows of inky
blackness.

Martie hardly thought of Clifford. Across her spinning senses an
occasional thought of him crept, but he had no part in to-night.
To-morrow she must end this dream of exquisite fulfillment, to-morrow,
somehow, she must send John away. But to-night was theirs.

Their talk was that of lovers, whose only life is in each other's
presence. They leaned on an old fence, above the town, and whether they
were grave, or whether Martie's gay laugh and his eager echoing laugh
rang out, the enchantment held them alike.

It was after one o'clock when they came slowly down the hill, and let
themselves silently into the shadowy garden. Martie fled noiselessly
past the streak of light under Lydia's door, gained her own room, and
blinked at her lighted gas.

The mirror showed her a pale, exalted face, with glittering blue eyes
under loosened bronze hair. She was cold, excited, tired, and ecstatic.
She moved the sprawling Teddy to the inside of the bed, stooping to lay
her cold cheek and half-opened lips to his flushed little face. She got
into a wrapper, her hair falling free on her shoulders, and sat
dreaming and remembering.

Lydia, in her gray wrapper, came in, with haggard, reproachful eyes.
Lydia was pale, too, but it was the paleness of fatigue, and had
nothing in common with Martie's starry pallor.

"Martie, do you know what time it is?"

"Lyd--I know it's late!"

"Late? It's two o'clock."

"Not really?" Martie bunched her splendid hair with a white hand under
each ear, and faced her affronted sister innocently.

"Don't say 'not really!'" Lydia, who happened to hate this expression,
which as a matter of fact Martie only used in m